Customer Reviews

Reflection

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Recorded for various television appearences on Germany's television programs Musik Laden and German Beatclub, In Reflection is a combination CD/Cd-Rom with both the audio and video performances. The primary reason to own this is the rare footage of Eno performing with the band as well as the classic line up of featuring former Curved Air keyboardist/violinist Eddie Jobson.

The audio is in mono and varies from quite good to so-so given the age of the tapes. The video is a pretty good transfer using Quicktime. Divided up over two discs with audio and video on each one, this collection supercedes the imports Valentine and Vintage which had the same tracks and video. Burning Airlines has done another outstanding job with the packaging. There's a generously illustrated booklet and essay.

For those who have long wondered why A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall sounds exactly like the album track from Ferry's These Foolish Things, it's because it is the original recording with Ferry miming (solo) along to the music. As to why the band didn't perform it live, it's probably because the five piece needed additional backing vocalist to bring it off live.

THE ONLY REASON TO BUY THIS IS TO SEE WHAT ROXY MUSIC LOOKED LIKE IN THE EARLY DAYS.
OTHERWISE, THE SOUND IS TOO BAD AND LENGTH TOO SHORT TO PAY THIS HIGH PRICE.

This is two multi-media CD's. The first disc was originally released as Valentine and the second as Vintage. Both are no longer in print but can be found used. These come from German TV shows from 1972 and 1974 that showed the band in live performances at small bars.

The first CD contains 6 songs and the second CD has 5 songs. The songs are in two formats: CD audio that can be played on any CD player and Quicktime video that can be played on a computer.

The CD's are short. The first is 29 minutes and the second is 26 minutes long.

The sound quality is very poor. It is what you might expect of sound quality taken from a European TV show in the early seventies.

The video quality is OK. It is a little dark, being filmed in a bar. When played on a PC in the little Quicktime window, it is tolerable. When played full screen, it starts too look bad.

The editing of the video is great. An excellent job is done focusing on the right musician at the right time and holding the shot. It is so much better than concert DVD's that are made today (like Roxy Music's most recent), where the camera is always zooming in and out and a shot is not held from more than 2 seconds before jumping to the next angle. With video on Reflections, you can really get a feel for the concert, even with the small window.

The first CD is mostly from 1972 (except for the last song) and the only reason to buy this set. It shows the band in the early glam rock days, complete with Brian Eno in a feather costume.

The second CD is from 1974 and has almost no redeeming qualities (except some good editing). By now, the band looked more or less like any other rock band, so there is nothing special about the video.

Overall, I don't think the track song selection for these CD's was the best of a Roxy Music concert. The only really good tracks/performances are a very interesting and stark In Every Dream Home a Hearbreak, a lively Remodel-Remake and stirring violin solo during Out Of the Blue.

Of course, the other songs would definitely be more enjoyable if the sound quality were better. It is just these three stand above the poor sound.

For years, I've bemoaned the lack of good live material from early Roxy. What have we here? Not only live music, but enhanced-CD videos of the first two (and easily the best two) lineups I always wanted to hear live, playing some of the songs I've always wanted to hear done live by the early editions. I've docked it a star for way mediocre sound quality - on sound alone, it might have merited 3 stars - but the videos! Great videos of a band that was high visual concept at the beginning. You've got hair stylings on Andy Mackay that resemble extruded plastic. You've got Eno in those horribly/wonderfully tacky feathered outfits (see the inside cover of For Your Pleasure) that he couldn't live down for years. You've got Bryan Ferry in much more makeup than he was willing to wear after Roxy made it big in Europe. The only missing touch is the segmented bug's-eye glasses Manzanera used to wear.

What a treat to see Eno firing up all the bleeps, bloops and whizzos from Re-Make/Re-Model and Virginia Plain. Given the fact that he didn't really play an instrument and Ferry played most of the keyboards then, it was hard to picture just how Eno fit into the live show between synth/tape eruptions without seeing it. As always in live Roxy the world's most underappreciated drummer, Paul Thompson, just whales the crap out of his drum set - especially in the sequence that closes Re-Make/Re-Model. Even without his bug-eye glasses (come to think of it, especially without them since fashion-imposed blindness had to impede him a bit) Manzanera is a tremendous, riveting guitarist. Here, you see the rocking-out Manzanera more than the oh-so-tasteful version required in the Siren to Avalon eras.

The German TV guys obviously knew and appreciated Roxy's work, since the cameras always seem to be on the shot you'd want. This is often not true in TV videos of groups that are a lot more obvious to capture than Roxy. It's a visual feast, and the sound is good enough to hear what they sounded like way back then. Totally worth it.